We Connect with DisplayPort at CES 2013

We met up with the guys at DisplayPort this year at CES, as we always do and checked out what their booth had to offer. Last year, they had a focus on talking about the features of DisplayPort that make it better without having many actual implementations. They also touted their ability to drive multiple displays through one connector as well as the ability to drive 4K at 60Hz, unlike HDMI 1.4a.

First, we saw a demonstration of DisplayPort driving three displays including a special adapter from Synaptics.Do note, this is an AMD based machine, AMD was one of the first if not the first graphics card company to adopt the DisplayPort standard in their consumer and professional graphics solutions. DisplayPort was absolutely pivotal in their Eyefinity engine which enabled all of their graphics cards from low to high end to drive a minimum of three displays.

Above, is the adapter that enables the three displays from one connector. Do note, it is powered.

Here, we have a single DisplayPort connector powering LG’s new 21:9 resolution 2560×1080 display, as you can see, it is a very elegant and simple solution that doesn’t require two cables.

Finally, they had a demonstration of how they could run a 4K display off of four different displays using a single DisplayPort connector. As you can see, this is a single Alienware computer driving four 1080P displays, which are connected together to display a single 4K image across the four displays. We saw a similar demo at other booths as well, however, using thunderbolt which is technically a miniDP connector (however, proprietary). This demo, though, did not run Thunderbolt, but rather DisplayPort with HBR2 (High Bit-Rate).

In the future, most talks about DisplayPort will likely refer to DisplayPort 1.2 as a professional standard, which actually saw heavy adoption in the professional market. We really hope to see more and more products adopting DisplayPort in 2013 after all of the work in 2011 and 2012. Afterall, you still do have to pay for an HDMI license and the cables are less versatile.